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Ad:tech says search top tactic for marketers

Published on March 15, 2006.

Mar 10, 2006

Larkspur, Calif.—More than half (52%) of marketers surveyed described paid search performance for 2005 as “great—outperforms other tactics,” edging out e-mail marketing to house lists, which came in second at 47%, according to an annual survey by ad:tech conducted with research company MarketingSherpa.

This marked the first time in the three years of the survey that search surpassed e-mail marketing to house lists.

Rented lists were a different story. Fifty-two percent of marketers said e-mail to rented lists topped their list of tactics that performed poorly. Behavioral targeting lost ground as a tactic for the first time this year, with 36% citing it as great, compared with 41% in the 2004 survey.

Marketers also indicated online budgets for 2006 are up, including investment in emerging tactics such as RSS, blogs and video ads. Forty percent said they will invest in adding RSS feeds this year, 35% will invest in in-house blogs, 30% will place ads on third-party blogs, and 27% said they will invest in video ads.